5 Big Mistakes To Avoid With Salesforce Leads
Most businesses should be making use of Leads in salesforce.
Unless you’re in a known and finite market then there will always be new Leads to be qualified.
(Actually even if you’re in a finite market in which every player is known you should probably still be using salesforce Leads).
But here’s the thing.
The lead process in salesforce is often badly implemented. That means a lack of sales and marketing alignment.
And that means reduced benefits and usually a lot of unnecessary frustration.
In our experience the mistakes made by one company are often repeated by another. So here are the 5 most common mistakes made in implementing Salesforce Leads.
Oh, and by the way. If one of these mistakes has been made in your business then don’t worry. We also explain the action that will fix it.
So here you go. 5 common mistakes made with salesforce Leads and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1. Not using Web to Lead
Your web site is an ideal place to solicit new inquiries from prospective customers.
In our experience if someone has taken the trouble to get in touch with you then they tend to be a pretty warm Lead.
So it’s a shame that companies often do one of two things. They invite prospects to send an email to an address published on the Contact Us page. Or secondly, they publish a form that doesn’t pass the information directly into salesforce.
This is a mistake because it adversely impacts your businesses’ ability to respond quickly and effectively to the inquiry. It means you cannot:
- Automatically route the Lead to the person best equipped to deal with the customer’s request.
- Automatically send the prospect an acknowledgement that you have received their request.
- Gather information about the request in a structured way (we can’t guarantee that the person includes a phone number in their email, for example).
- Measure how quickly your team respond to new Leads.
- Automatically link the Lead to a Campaign. This means you lose valuable information about marketing effectiveness.
It also means someone will need to re-type the inquiry in salesforce and that’s a waste of time.
How to avoid or fix this mistake
Replace the email address or third party form with a salesforce Web-to-Lead form.
This will automatically create a Lead in salesforce when someone completes the form. It means you can avoid or correct all of the shortcomings listed above.
Here’s more information on how to implement salesforce Web-to-Lead forms.
Mistake #2. Not using Lead Assignment Rules in salesforce
All evidence demonstrates that the quicker you respond to a sales inquiry the greater the chances of winning the deal.
If you rely on team leaders, sales support or managers to assign Leads then you may be delaying the response to the inquiry. And that can mean lost sales.
The quickest way to get a Lead in salesforce into the hands of a person that can contact the prospect is to use Lead Assignment Rules. So it’s a mistake not to use them.
How to avoid or fix this mistake
Lead Assignment Rules can be based on any standard or custom field on the Lead. They’re easy and straightforward to set up. Here’s where you can find more information on setting up Lead Assignment Rules (LINK).
Or get in touch if you’d like to know more about the custom solutions that we have implemented for customers. These include the ability to automatically assign Leads based on holidays and team availability.
Mistake #3. Not linking Leads to Campaigns
In many cases Leads are created but no-one knows where they came from. For example, the Leads are not linked to the marketing campaign that generated the Lead or influenced the qualification process.
This means that information on the effectiveness of marketing campaigns is lost. It’s impossible to tell which marketing activities work and which don’t.
But it goes deeper than that.
If the Lead is converted and an Opportunity is created then there’s no information on the contribution of the marketing campaign. In other words, the return on investment on marketing campaigns cannot be calculated.
How to avoid or fix this mistake
Link the Lead to the marketing Campaign that generated the Lead.
If the Lead came from an advert, trade show or email program then link the Lead to the relevant Campaign. Be sure to modify the Campaign Member Status values to reflect the various types of Campaign. Here’s a blog post that explains how and why to use Campaign Members.
Sometimes there’s no obvious marketing campaign. For example, if the Lead is generated by a Web-to-Lead form on your web site. Our recommendation is to create an ongoing Campaign called Web Inquiries and link these Leads to that Campaign.
That way you’ll get consistent management information on all Leads and understand the contribution played by different marketing campaigns.
One more thing whilst were on this topic.
Let’s clear up the ambiguity between Campaigns and the Lead Source field.
The Lead Source is a picklist that is populated when the Lead is first created. For example, a picklist value on the Lead Source might be Exhibitions. But the Campaign tells you which specific exhibition generated the Lead. So use both in conjunction with each other to get the most informative management information.
Superb Pipeline Visibility and Sales
Performance Metrics from this free Dashboard.
Mistake #4. Opportunities are not created when the Lead is Converted
Here’s what happened in several companies that asked for our help in improving the lead management process.
The telemarketing team contacted the Lead and arranged an appointment for a field sales person. The Lead was assigned to the sales person. The sales person converted the Lead to an Account and Contact but without creating an Opportunity.
The meeting created by the telemarketing team was fulfilled by the sales person. If the meeting was successful then the sales person created an Opportunity.
But this approach is a mistake. Here’s why.
The relationship between the Opportunity and originating Campaign and the Lead Source was broken. This is because the Opportunity was not created at the point of Conversion. This means that it is now impossible to determine the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns or lead sources.
How to avoid or fix this mistake
Convert the Lead to an Account, Contact and Opportunity when the meeting is arranged. This means the link between the Campaign and Lead Source is retained and passed through to the Opportunity.
It also means that the meeting is recorded against both the Contact and the Opportunity.
As a result, reports and dashboard charts now demonstrate the efficacy of Campaigns and various lead sources in producing revenue.
Both of our customers set the new Opportunity to “Stage 0 – Marketing Qualified”.
It’s perfectly acceptable for the sales person to “Qualify-out” the Opportunity immediately after the initial meeting. The sales person selects from a ‘Reason Lost’ picklist and enters additional information into a text box or the Chatter Feed on the Opportunity. This means there’s a process of continuous improvement fueled by feedback on the success or failure of each early-stage Opportunity.
Study this blog post to understand about Lead Conversion and to download lead management process diagrams. To find more about tracking the revenue contribution of converted leads use, 7 Lead Conversion Metrics You Should Use (But Probably Don’t).
Mistake #5. Treat every new salesforce Lead as if it’s sales-ready
Often businesses don’t differentiate between sales-ready Leads and nurture-ready Leads. They treat everyone as sales-ready.
If someone fills in a form on your web site asking you to get in touch then it’s safe to say they’re sales-ready. They’re willing and able to speak to a sales person.
But that doesn’t apply to everyone that fills in a form. And it definitely doesn’t always apply to Leads from other sources.
Think about your own buying process. You might download an e-book, whitepaper, case study, product specification or other useful content. But it doesn’t mean you immediately want to hear from a sales person.
Yet often companies pass these Leads straight to Sales to call. And that’s a mistake.
Here’s another example.
At considerable expense one of our customers attended a trade show and gathered 160 new Leads. “It will be like shooting fish in a barrel”, said the VP of marketing as he handed the Leads over to Sales.
The Sales team phoned all the Leads. Want to guess how many new Opportunities were created?
None.
12 months later we phoned 10 of the Leads as part of our research project for the customer. Here’s what we found.
- 2 companies had purchased from a competitor.
- 2 companies were actively engaged in a purchasing process but neither had involved our client.
- 1 hadn’t started a formal purchasing process but expected to do so in the next 6 months.
- 4 had taken no action following the trade show and didn’t expect to make a purchase any time soon.
- 1 was only interested in winning the iPad giveaway competition.
In other words half of the Leads were legitimate potential customers. In fact two had already bought from a competitor.
At the time Sales contacted the Leads the prospects were not sales-ready. They were nurture-ready. The fact that our client failed to communicate or nurture these Leads on a regular basis after the trade show was a mistake. And that mistake meant missed opportunities, and in all probability, lost sales.
How to avoid or fix this mistake
Those Leads that are sales-ready need to be contacted quickly. But not all Leads fall into this category. In fact the majority probably don’t.
To deal with the nurture-ready Leads implement a regular program of targeted marketing communications to move Leads along the path to being sales-ready.
The most effective way to do this is by using a marketing automation platform such as Marketo, Hubspot or Pardot. These applications enable sophisticated targeting to support lead nurturing. They also provide lead tracking and scoring to indicate when a Lead appears to be sales-ready.
If you don’t have access to and advanced marketing automation tool then use a mass email tools such as Dotmailer or MailChimp. The capabilities are less advanced but they can still be integrated with salesforce to track how well specific Leads are responding to marketing communications.
Of course don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like our help with Leads in salesforce in your business. We won’t necessarily regard you as sales-ready but we promise to contact you quickly. 🙂
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